Louis Mendez and his son Ryan, 7, visit the grassroots memorial on July 30, 2012, across the street from where the Aurora theater shooting took place. James Holmes was convicted in the shooting and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The death penalty has been declared all but dead in Colorado, where no one has been executed since 1997 or even been sentenced to death in a decade — including in horrific crimes such as the Aurora theater shooting and Christopher Watts’ murder of his wife and two young daughters.

Still, the visceral debate over capital punishment here — where the state Senate will take a key vote as soon as Wednesday on whether to take it off the table altogether — is part of a larger national conversation. Across the United States, but especially in the West, the death penalty is falling out of favor with prosecutors, juries, courts and state lawmakers from both parties.

Last year, in particular, was a watershed year as not one person was executed and only seven people were sentenced to death west of Texas — a 40-year low, according to an analysis of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that advocates for reforming the death penalty system.

In addition, there have been increasing concerns that not everyone convicted of major crimes is actually guilty — the Innocence Project has used DNA evidence to exonerate 20 people on death row — and that it is disproportionately applied to nonwhites. A 2015 University of Denver study found that prosecutors in Colorado were more likely to seek the death penalty against black and Latino defendants than against white defendants.

“We see more and more people favor the death penalty in principle but not in practice,” said Robert Dunham, the executive director of the center. “The death penalty they favor is not in place. That’s been one of the major changes in the legislatures in the West.”

This week’s Senate floor debate and vote are crucial for supporters of repeal. Democrats hold a narrow majority in the Senate, and positions on the death penalty don’t strictly follow party lines.

The last time Colorado Democrats made a serious attempt to abolish capital punishment was in 2013. When then-Gov. John Hickenlooper signaled he’d veto the bill making its way through the legislature, lawmakers spiked it.

Just two months later, after having a change of heart about the death penalty, the governor indefinitely stayed the execution of Nathan Dunlap, who was convicted of murdering four of his former co-workers at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Convicted killer Nathan Dunlap arrives back in court after a short recess during the hearing held at the Arapahoe County Court in Centennial on May 1, 2013.

Hickenlooper’s decision was met with extraordinary criticism. His executive order can only be overturned by another governor, something Gov. Jared Polis is not inclined to do. And the two other men on death row — Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray, who were convicted in the 2005 murders of Javad Marshall-Fields and Vivian Wolfe — are in the midst of appeals and their executions have not been scheduled yet.

More recently, juries have declined to sentence even the most heinous criminals to death, including James Holmes, who killed 12 people at an Aurora theater, and Dexter Lewis, who stabbed five people to death at a Denver bar. And last year, Weld County prosecutors made a plea deal to give Watts, who last year killed his wife and two children, life in prison.

Public support for the death penalty also has dropped significantly since it peaked at 80 percent in 1994, according to Gallup. However, a small majority of Americans — 56 percent — still favor it for people convicted of murder.

There is a wide partisan gap. According to Pew Research, 77 percent of Republicans in 2018 supported the death penalty, while only 35 percent of Democrats did. Fifty-two percent of unaffiliated voters support capital punishment.

“There’s a difference between popular opinion and those tasked with carrying out capital punishment,” said Amber Widgery, a senior policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures, which monitors policy trends across the states. “With mounting cost and logistical difficulties, lawmakers are taking a hard look and asking themselves if they can sustain this.”

Nebraska is a case study in the split between policymakers and the public. In 2015, state lawmakers voted to repeal capital punishment, but the next year voters restored the death penalty at the ballot box. The rebuke of lawmakers was financed in large part by the state’s wealthy Republican governor and his family.

Robert Blecker, a professor of criminal law and constitutional history at New York Law School, said he worries that abolition of the death penalty is part of a larger problem: the erosion of punishment.

“Punishment itself is dying,” he said. “The question is, if we abolish the death penalty, do we diminish justice?”

Blecker, who believes the death penalty should be reserved for “the worst of the worst of the worst,” has spent thousands of hours researching and interviewing criminals who live on death row as well as those who have been given life without the chance of parole. His findings suggest that the punishment handed down rarely matches the scope of the crime.

“Some people deserve to die, and we have a moral obligation to execute them,” he said, adding that juries should need to decide capital cases using a much higher threshold than “beyond a reasonable doubt” of guilt.

If the Colorado legislation to repeal the death penalty makes it through the Senate, the state House will take up the bill next. The lower chamber is considered far more liberal than the Senate, and the bill is all but ensured passage there. Polis has also pledged to sign the bill if it makes it to his desk.

Nic Garcia is a political reporter for The Denver Post. He previously worked for Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization focused on public education, and Out Front, Colorado’s oldest LGBT news organization.

More in Colorado Politics

U.S. Senate candidate Dan Baer suspended his campaign Thursday and endorsed rival candidate John Hicknelooper. He's the third Democrat to drop out of the primary since Hickenlooper, the former governor, entered the race last month.

The end of Palisade peaches means the beginning of the fall political season -- even in a year without much on the ballot. That’s because politicians are already jockeying like it’s 2020. Following John Hickenlooper’s entry into the upcoming race for U.S. Senate, a second candidate is riding into the Rocky Mountains sunset. See below for what John Walsh told...

In a nondescript Lakewood office building Tuesday night, Michael Bennet’s increasingly uphill campaign for president received what his supporters hope will be a breath of life. Or, at least, proof of life.